It is known to employ Voice or Signal Activity Detectors (VADs/SADs) to improve audio quality and bandwidth in audio or voice communications. For example, the following, co-owned patent applications describe such subject matter: (1) United States Patent Publication Number 20110106533 to Yu, published 5 May 2011 and entitled “MULTI-MICROPHONE VOICE ACTIVITY DETECTOR”; (2) United States Patent Publication Number 20100198593 to Yu, published 5 Aug. 2010 and entitled “SPEECH ENHANCEMENT WITH NOISE LEVEL ESTIMATION ADJUSTMENT”; (3) United States Patent Publication Number 20100211388 to Yu et al., published 19 Aug. 2010 and entitled “SPEECH ENHANCEMENT WITH VOICE CLARITY”; (4) United States Patent Publication Number 20100076769 to Yu, published 25 Mar. 2010 and entitled “SPEECH ENHANCEMENT EMPLOYING A PERCEPTUAL MODEL”; (5) U.S. Pat. No. 8,280,731 to Yu, granted 2 Oct. 2012 and entitled “NOISE VARIANCE ESTIMATOR FOR SPEECH ENHANCEMENT”—all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
In addition, it is known to convert a plurality of audio input signals form a first format to another format. For example, the following co-owned patent applications describe such subject matter: (1) United States Patent Publication Number 20110137662 to McGrath et al., published 9 Jun. 2011 and entitled “AUDIO SIGNAL TRANSFORMATTING”; (2) U.S. Pat. No. 8,260,607 to Villemoes et al., granted 4 Sep. 2012 and entitled “AUDIO SIGNAL ENCODING OR DECODING”; (3) International Patent Application No. PCT/US2012/024370 filed on 8 Feb. 2012, entitled “COMBINED SUPPRESSION OF NOISE AND OUT-OF-LOCATION SIGNALS” and International Patent Application No. PCT/US2012/024372 filed on 8 Feb. 2012 entitled “POST-PROCESSING INCLUDING MEDIAN FILTERING OF NOISE SUPPRESSION GAINS”—all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.